38 if f!? HE 1HEATItE ,r," '- I # $, O r' ?"' ' ' YES AND NO .;l ; } ' : ; : . ::r. ; .: ; .. ',- J( 1= '...", "- ;'. . , ',' .- ,,' E,_ ,-,: , ,! r I 7 ) . ,',1 ...._ .l.JJ . ,"' ., l.1 s' '. -<J:.. fu ;;fJ ;, , ... \" : ; f - .7':*r , r . > . '" i .;. ,... > l "'<';/.?:::. ' ':: ',: ...... . . \' :.:,,' '" <.. . " " 1 ;i] :, . ; ....... i"' f : f :f,t }: :' :i,;:':, :,. .m i' ,:' t ....,, :}::. '.. ' \ \ :, '. 1j:; ':-1:V ,I . 1i'(. " ;",.... T AST week brought only two new L contributions to Broadway. The first of these was called "Dark Hammock" (a title that irritated me even after I found out what it meant), and it closed after two very painful performances at the Forrest. The other, "Dear Ruth," a comedy by Norman Krasna, at the Henry Miller, looks from here very much like a success. We will consider the living first. "Dear Ruth" is just a variation of a good many other pieces about the girl and the soldier on a brief leave, but it is an intelligent one, t}:lanks not only to Mr. Krasna's tidy construction and lit- erate humor but also to a very im-pres- sive directing job by Moss Hart. The story is slight and, as noted, not alto- gether unfamiliar. Miriam \Vilkins, one of those teen-age girls who so often seem to make family life in America harder than strictly necessary, has been writing letters to a lieutenant overseas, signing them with her elder sis- ter's name, for reasons never quite clear to me. They are exhaustive and rather stimulating com- u positions, dealing with such advanced matters as Love, Life, Swinburne, and the sex habits of the Soviets, and the lieu ten - an t, hurrying to call on his correspondent at her home in Kew Gardens, is under certain hopeful misapprehensions. Any- way, he gets there, and since Miriam has also en- closed her sister's picture in one of her letters, he makes a very natural mistake (Mr. Krasna's plot seems to be getting a little too much for me along here) and goes right to work on the wrong girl. Ruth, which happens to be the sister's name, is en- gaged to a young banker who is just about as stuffy as they come (it is appar- ently a convention of our stage that young suburban bankers are all bores), but on the theory that a girl can't be too nice to a hero, especially when he can be counted on to go away in a cou- pIe of days, she is very nice indeed to the lieutenant. The rest ought to. be obvious, even to a very casual student of the theatre, and anyway I suppose it is more or less Mr. Krasna's secret, so I will say only that everything turns out very neatly in the end. The issue is slightly compli- cated by a secondary love affair, also military, but you don't have to pay any particular attention to it. All this, I can see now, sounds like a moderately exasperating little piece of work. As a matter of fact, it is really quite pleasant in an elementary sort of way. I guess you'll just have to take my word for it. Virginia Gilmore, as Ruth, is very decorative, and if her performance often suggests the one given by Mar- garet Sullavan in "The Voice of the Turtle," it is probably just that the parts are rather similar. Lenore Lon- ergan, as the demon Miriam; Phyllis .Povah and Howard Smith, as her harried parents; and John Dall, as the lieutenant who gets his girls mixed up, are all attractive in their varIous ways. P ASSING rapidly from the quick to the dead, "Dark Hammock" was a memoir of the Taft administration, hav- ing to do with a young woman who chipp d the heads off kitchen matches and fed them to her hus- band in his eggnog. One of the most curious pro- gram notes of the season reads, "The authors are anxious to express their thanks to the late Dr. J. Carlind Browne, of the Doctors' Hospital, New York City, w hose ingenious diagnosis helped them to set down the facts concerning Mar- vin Platt's mysterious ailment." I am happy to report that my own physician, still current, is of the opinion that matches are now so constructed that they can be eaten with impunity, though, of course, preferably in moder- ation. Anyway, Mrs. Platt's motive for trying to remove Mr. Platt was that she wanted to inherit his Inoney so that she could rejoin a younger and more ap- petizing lover in New York. That she failed was only because of the fortunate arrival of a female scientist (played by Elissa Landi), who found a big jug of phosphorus rigbt under a trapdoor in the living room and cleared everything up in an executive though slightly high- handed way (she tricked Mrs. Platt into drinking her own witches' bre\\ ). Miss Landi was abetted in these glum doings by such agreeable actors as Mary "Tickes, Arthur Hunnicutt, and Mary Orr. Miss Orr, I regret to say, collabo- rated with Reginald Denham in writ- ing the darn thing. I THINK you had better make up your own mind ahout "Little Women," which will be at the City Center through December 23rd. It is a nice enough production, though by no means as nice as the one Hollywood gave Katharine Hepburn, but I'm afraid that somehow or other the girls are be ginning to get on my nerves. Probably I've just known them too lonz. -\VOLCOTT GIBBS '- . IC STORM No ice so pure and clear as this that tips the boughs of birches, dips the twigs in glass; the grove, a chandelier the land to light- a land of angel white, a land of strass. The looping trees bestow from branches bent each loosened ornan1ent upon the snow. Earth IS no longer earth and sky not sky; the clouds around us lie, a heavenly birth. World without shadow, world without a sound, a changeling planet found all plumed and pearled, no hue for eyes', no lute for ears' delight, a Paradise of white, an Eden mute. -PEGGY BACON